High fuel prices and traffic congestion have made motorcycles, and motorized scooters such as those commercially available from Piaggio & Co. S.p.A. under the trademark “Vespa®”, an increasingly common mode of transportation, not only for recreational purposes but for people commuting to and from their place of employment. While production vehicles of this type may include some amenities found in automobiles and other vehicles, such as a radio, they have no means of providing riders with ready access to items such as radar detectors, toll road transponders, global positioning devices (GPS), cellular telephones, cameras, change holders, garage door openers, personal digital assistants (PDA) and other portable devices.
This deficiency of production motorcycles and scooters has been addressed by aftermarket mounting devices that may be secured to different parts of the vehicle. These include handlebar mounts, control mounts, stem mounts, fairing mounts, mirror mounts and different specialty mounts. In each case, the mount generally comprises a vehicle mounting element designed to attach to a part of the vehicle, a lower pivot coupled to the vehicle mounting element, a device mounting element designed to support a number of different portable devices, an upper pivot coupled to the device mounting element, and, a shaft extending between the upper and lower pivots. The mount is connected to the vehicle and a portable device such as a GPS or cellular telephone is secured to the device mounting element, at which time the position of the device may be adjusted by manipulation of one or both of the upper and lower pivots to the satisfaction of the rider. This arrangement allows the cyclist ready access to and/or viewing of a given portable device, and reduces potentially dangerous situations wherein the rider must reach into a pocket of his or her clothing, or a storage area of the vehicle, to access a particular device while riding.
The device mounting element of aftermarket mounts noted above is typically a support plate having an array of apertures configured to align with corresponding mounting holes in the housing of a particular model or style of portable device. The location and number of such mounting holes may vary from manufacturer-to-manufacturer, and is dependent on the type of device to be connected to the support plate. As such, a number of support plates must be provided by manufacturers of aftermarket mounts in order to accommodate different types and brands of portable devices. Additionally, device mounting elements may take the form of a cradle for cellular telephones, such as shown, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 8,613,379. But cradles of this type have limited adjustment capability which detracts from their usefulness in view of the wide variety of sizes of cellular telephones.